....
No, they wouldn't call you because you broke the law. That'd be ridiculous. That isn't in procedure. Should they have knocked? Probably. But still. C'mon.
Why would that be ridiculous exactly?
We aren't talking about drug dealers here. No one was going to take that deer and use it to kill anyone. The shelter wasnt' filled with religious fanatics who were likely to do suicide attacks to keep one baby deer.
The law is the law.
I hate to bring this up but that's the kind of thinking authoritarians use to excuse abuses in power. Whenever that excuse comes up we should look at it really hard. That's where the outrage is coming from, that this sort of thing seems to be becoming more and more common. You can't dismiss the outrage if you don't understand why it' s there.
Yes they should have called. They should not have escalated the situation. At the least someone in the police force should have mentioned that this would reinforce the perception of cops as jack booted thugs and open the dept to charges of misusing tax payer monies.
Oh on a side note.. when someone stole my plates and used them while stealing gas in Arnold Missouri, the Arnold cops actually DID call me to question me if I was the one who stole the gas. I explained my plates had been stolen, my car was totally different make/model from the one they said had fled the gas station and somehow 13 law officers did not have to show up to corral me at work or erase pictures off my phone while they searched for the car.
So yeah.. apparently cops do know how to use the phone and there's nothing in procedure that stops them from doing so.
That's a completely different situation and context. And I think you know it.
No I don't see how that is all that different or rebuts my point.. Nor do you bother to explain, apparently.
It was different in my case it was actual larceny, certainly a more serious crime then having a baby deer. Yet the cops still managed to handle it without scores of officers. There was nothing in procedure that kept them from calling.
So why could the cops use the phone in my case but not call an animal shelter? The claim that the cops were not allowed to call someone they thought might have broken the law is patently false.
But sure, keep on going with the whole 'everyone who says the cops only followed procedure and the law are being authoritarians'.
of course
I didnt' say that "everyone who says" that is being authoritarian.
What i said was we should look at arguments centered on the idea that the "law is the law"with more scrutiny because authoritarians use that as an excuse to justify/dismiss charges of abuse of power by authorities. Because authoritarians do do that.If you give them moral dilemmas (e.g. should one steal an absurdly
expensive drug to save a life?) they’re more likely to say, “The law is the law and
must be obeyed” than most people are.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/That seems like an important distinction and when you ignore that difference, it looks like you're building a straw man. Especially when
you cut out a large portion of my text without even so much as an ellipse to indicate that what you were quoting wasn't exactly what I had said.God damn I hate hysterical response to anything dealing with cops.
But are you sure it's not just your perception that it's hysterical?
Even the positive stories have had people scream about how it's just a cover for something sinister.
Now who's making blanket accusals?
Anyway, I don't have to prove that no one ever had bad feelings/suspicion of the cops to show that the cops over reacted and abused their power, sending a swat team where it was not needed and escalating the situation.. here specifically or in a general sense.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2006/01/swat-teams-everywhereBTW, a lot of you seem to be using the word "policy" like a rhetorical shield.
Here's a secret I am still surprised is secret.
Cops and indeed lots of people make up "policy" as it suits their needs. Cops have even made up laws on the spot to justify threat of arrests. Cops have admitted this to me. I have had lawyers tell me this. I have seen it happen.
I bring this up here because while the law that forbids possession of wild animals is cited, no one has shown the written policy that says the cops can't make a phone call or have to have to use overwhelming force even in such a low threat case (remember, no one was arrested. that's how DANGEROUS!!!! the cops thought these animal shelter workers really were)
The only person who claimed this officially is the spokesperson, who's job it is to protect the police dept's image and apparently cant' tell the difference between an animal shelter and a drug lab.
